Published on 12/01/2024
Words: Key Industries
What are the specific dangers, and what steps can growers take to mitigate the risk of FAW infestation?
The enemy’s strength
In the famous book ‘The Art of War’, master strategist Sun Tzu asserted: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you needn’t fear the result of a hundred battles.”
His expanded point is this: Winning comes from knowing and exploiting the enemy’s vulnerabilities while shielding your own weaknesses from their strengths.
Neutralise and attack.
Aside from their capacity to migrate long distances and their lightening-speed in breeding, the primary advantage of FAW is their stealth.
As maize crops grow, FAW eggs and larvae hide deep within the whorl of developing plants. Concealed from sight, infestations can break out before farmers are aware their crops have been invaded.
Neutralising the enemy’s advantage
If secrecy is a key to FAW’s breeding success, how can growers remove this advantage?
Key Industries Monitoring Kits.
Monitoring kits are pheromone traps, specifically engineered to attract the male moths of the species of Army Worm now threatening New Zealand.
Captured moths are a clear sign that FAW larvae are living within a grower’s crop.
In this regard, they function like smoke alarms, giving an early warning that a problem exists that needs to be dealt with immediately.
From defence to attack
Once a Key Industries Monitoring Kit captures a moth, the next step is to carry out inspection walks to determine the extent of the infestation.
This will allow growers to carry out targeted spray programmes to preserve their crops.
Each monitoring kit contains three stations with sufficient pheromone lure for three months of trapping.
Positioning them on the windward side ensures effective dispersion of pheromones into the field.
Checking them twice a week is also crucial for pest detection.
Only a team can win the war
While early warning detection will save the individual farmer, it’s the nationwide approach that will safeguard crop-growing industries.
To this end, FAR is continually refining a predictive system that will provide growers with early warnings of the migration movements of FAW.
To enhance predictive accuracy, FAR requires a network of pheromone traps down the length of the country, with growers calling in moth-capture details to their central database. To report capture findings, emailAshley.Mills@far.org.nz